Racial Justice and Anti-racism Resources

Microaggression is a subtle form of discrimination. Similar to research on overt discrimination, this meta-analysis shows a robust and small bivariate correlation between adjustment outcomes and racial, LGBTQ, and health status microaggressions. Correlations are larger (a) when adjustment outcomes focus on internalizing problems, stress and negative affect, and positive adjustment and affect, (b) when microaggression is measured at the interpersonal level and in terms of microassault, and (c) in samples with more men, and with Asian, Black, and Hispanic Americans.

Two studies examined the cognitive costs of blatant and subtle racial bias during interracial interactions. In Study 1, Black participants engaged in a 10-minute, face-to-face interaction with a White confederate who expressed attitudes and behaviors consistent with blatant, subtle, or no racial bias. Consistent with contemporary theories of modern racism, interacting with a subtly biased, compared with a blatantly biased, White partner impaired the cognitive functioning of Blacks. Study 2 revealed that Latino participants suffered similar cognitive impairments when exposed to a White partner who displayed subtle, compared with blatant, racial bias. The theoretical and practical implications for understanding the dynamics of interracial interactions in the context of contemporary bias are discussed.

Previous research on microaggressions has emphasized the frequency of and distress produced by microaggressions as reported by people of color. The current research supplements the existing literature by developing a self-report measure of White individuals’ microaggressive likelihood against Black people, the Cultural Cognitions and Actions Scale (CCAS). Overall, this report supports a growing literature that microaggressions are more than innocuous, harmless behaviors, unrelated to racism, and instead represent relevant processes within the science of racism and bias. It also provides a potential means of testing the effectiveness of interventions intended to reduce the commission of microaggressions.

Previous efforts to understand microaggressions have surveyed stigmatized group members’ experiences of receiving microaggressions. This report presents the first attempt to measure self-reported likelihood of delivering microaggressions rather than receiving microaggressions and to explore the association between the likelihood of delivering microaggressions and racial prejudice. Results offer preliminary support that the delivery of microaggressions by white students is not simply innocuous behavior and may be indicative of broad, complex, and negative racial attitudes and explicit underlying hostility and negative feelings toward black students.

Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War.
Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers’ reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial. Blight’s sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.

Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. Perpetrators of microaggressions are often unaware that they engage in such communications when they interact with racial/ethnic minorities. A taxonomy of racial microaggressions in everyday life was created through a review of the social psychological literature on aversive racism, from formulations regarding the manifestation and impact of everyday racism, and from reading numerous personal narratives of counselors (both White and those of color) on their racial/cultural awakening. Microaggressions seem to appear in three forms: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation. Almost all interracial encounters are prone to microaggressions; this article uses the White counselor-client of color counseling dyad to illustrate how they impair the development of a therapeutic alliance. Suggestions regarding education and training and research in the helping professions are discussed.

In this paper, we provide a review of racial microaggressions research literature in psychology since 2007, following the publication of the first comprehensive taxonomy of racial microaggressions, which provided a conceptual framework and directions for research related to racial microaggressions. However, our review suggests that important conceptual and methodological issues remain to be addressed in the three domains: (1) what are racial microaggressions and who do they impact; (2) why are racial microaggressions important to examine; and (3) how are racial microaggressions currently studied and how might we improve the methodologies used to study racial microaggressions. We propose recommendations to further facilitate racial microaggressions research, improve the scientific rigor of racial microaggressions research, and contribute toward a more complete and sophisticated understanding of the concept and consequences of racial microaggressions—a construct that is undoubtedly salient and psychologically relevant among many members of racial minority groups.